Unusual Facts About the World That You Probably Won’t Find in the Encyclopedia

The world is an amazing place. Just when it seems that you’ve seen everything, it surprises you with something new. Even ordinary things sometimes turn our worlds upside down when we see them from an unusual angle. For example, it turns out that 1/10 of the world’s gold reserves belongs to Indian housewives, and there are people from a village that have a sleeping sickness causing them to fall asleep for an entire week! How can we get that disease?

Here at Bright Side, we’ve collected several incredible facts about our world. They’re so unusual that you might want to share them with your friends and family.

Steven Spielberg wanted to direct a James Bond movie but he was rejected. Then he shared his problem with his friend George Lucas who said that he had an idea of how to make a James Bond movie but better. This is how Indiana Jones was created.

During the prohibition in the U.S., vineyard owners producedsolid concentrated grape juice that was called “grape bricks”. In order not to go to jail, they had to make sure that grapes weren’t used to make wine. That’s why the bricks were sold with a notice on them that said after the brick was dissolved in water, the solution shouldn’t be kept in a dark cool place for 21 days. A perfect marketing ploy, isn’t it?

The people living in Kalachi, Kazakhstan have a strange sleep syndrome. People feel tired and sleepy and some of them even fall asleep for the entire week. Many scientists conducted studies in this village but they didn’t find out what the reason for this amazing phenomenon was.

Apples that we buy in stores were picked 6-12 months ago. Before they are in stores, they are kept in special fridges with very low oxygen levels so that they don’t lose their appearance.

There is an episode of “Mythbusters” that nobody will ever see. The creators made a very powerful explosive using scrap materials and when they realized the possible consequences, they quickly deleted the episode and warned the police that terrorists can use the results of this experiment for their own purposes.

This is how the shape of Coca-Cola bottles has changed over the years. If you look at them from left to right, the first bottle was released in 1899, the second in 1900, the third in 1915, the fourth in 1916, the fifth in 1957, and the sixth in 1986.

Half of the people who are 65 are still alive. This is explained by the fact before the 20th century the average life expectancy around the world was 33-39 years. Now people live much longer thanks to the development of medicine.

It’s amazing but there is way more bacteria in a human belly button that in the bathroom. Scientists compared 10 belly buttons of volunteers and compared them with germs found in the bathroom. More than that, almost 1,500 kinds of bacteria that were found were unknown to science.

At the end of the Vietnam war, an American ship had to throw away $10 million worth of helicopters so that a pilot with his family could land.

Very few people know that Elvis Presley’s natural hair color was light. When he was young, he dyed his hair and people remember him as a dark-haired macho.

A truck driver from Australia had a heart attack and experienced a clinical death. He spent 12 days in a coma and right when doctors wanted to turn off his life support, he woke up. After that, he won a car in the lottery. The car cost $17,000. A local TV-company was so impressed with his luck that they decided to make a story about him. The director’s idea was that the guy was supposed to remove the protective layer of a lottery ticket on camera. This ticket got the man $170,000.

At the beginning of the 19th century, ketchup was advertised as a cure for diarrhea and jaundice. It was even made into pills. But later, this information was proven wrong and ketchup has since been sold only as a sauce.

Some people believe that it’s possible to determine the sex of a future baby by the shape of the pregnant woman’s bump. The idea goes like this: if the bump grows only forward, it’s a boy and if becomes bigger on the sides, it’s a girl. Even though this is a popular idea, it’s a misconception, or at least, it hasn’t been proven by any scientific research. The shape and size of the bump depend on how tall or short the woman is and some other factors.

Which of these facts amazed you the most? Tell us in the comment section below!